Rio Rancho’s Garcia going up in weight
He will fight at featherweight in search of UFC contract
In his pursuit of bigger things, Rio Rancho MMA fighter Steve Garcia has had to get smaller.
Smaller, that is, relative to his competition.
In actuality, Garcia is going up in weight — from bantamweight (135 pounds) to featherweight (145) — for his fight Friday night against Jose Mariscal at Route 66 Casino Hotel. It’s the main event of a 12-fight Legacy Fighting Alliance card.
Garcia is making the move to featherweight because cutting weight to make 135 pounds had become so difficult as to threaten his health, not to mention costly to his career and his pocketbook.
Cutting weight to 145 pounds, he said in a recent interview with cagedminds.com, has been far easier.
The tradeoff, however, is that the natural advantages he enjoyed as a “big” bantamweight (6 feet tall) will be at least somewhat diluted against bigger fighters at featherweight.
Garcia has been encouraged, though, by his work in the gym in advance of Friday’s fight.
“I … needed to make sure I had the strength to handle these 45ers because I know I always had it automatically with the 35ers,” he told Caged Mind’s Mika Frankl. “But I feel strong, I definitely feel strong.
“I get (encouragement from) all my training partners. I like hearing that, especially because they’re 45ers.”
Regarding the move to featherweight, Garcia’s recent fights left him little choice.
In November 2018, before a scheduled fight against Tucumcari’s Abel Cullum on a Jackson-Wink Fight Night card at Isleta Resort & Casino, Garcia weighed in more than three pounds above the bantamweight limit and told the New Mexico Athletic Commission he could not safely drop any more weight.
The fight went on, and Garcia won by brutal, bloody unanimous decision. But because of his failure to make weight, he likely forfeited a portion of his contracted pay.
In May 2019, on another Jackson-Wink Fight Night card, Garcia defeated Andrew Whitney by first-round TKO. But that fight was contested at a “catch weight” of 140 pounds.
Then, that August on Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series, with a UFC contract potentially at stake, Garcia was beyond impressive in defeating Desmond Torres by first-round TKO.
But because Garcia once again had failed to make the bantamweight limit, White, the UFC President, told him there would be no UFC contract.
“Everything is on me,” Garcia told cagedminds.com. “That’s why I love this sport, because … it’s really on you and there’s not much to blame besides what you do.
“You’ve just got to be careful with who’s around you, and obviously dieting and stuff like that. But everything falls on you, and that was just a hard weight cut to do … .”
For his debut at 145 pounds, Garcia (104) has drawn a rugged challenge in Mariscal (10-3), an Illinois native who lives and trains in Denver.
The two are not strangers. Mariscal trained for a period of time in Albuquerque at Jackson-Wink MMA, Garcia’s longtime training base.
Garcia said he respects Mariscal but believes his own skills are at a higher level — making Friday’s fight a nearperfect audition for that long-sought UFC contract. At featherweight. “All the hard work I’ve been doing and the training that I’ve been putting into this new style that I’m trying to develop,” Garcia said “… I want to see how well I can do it against someone as tough as him.”